The distribution of products involves supplying goods to stores and other businesses that sell to consumers. In North America alone, the distribution industry is a $900 billion per year industry that accounts for over 1 million jobs and almost 100,000 businesses. Key to the distribution process is a sales process whereby stores and businesses are persuaded, often by a sales representative, to sell certain products in the store. Once a product is being sold by a store, such as on a store shelf or on a restaurant menu, the distribution process involves a continuing relationship with the store or business whereby the distributor supplies the store with the required number of products and addresses related customer requests. This ongoing relationship with the store or business is extremely valuable to the distributor, as it represents a revenue stream.
In light of the enormous value placed on earning a customer's loyalty, distributors expend enormous amounts of time and resources every year to insure that its customers continue selling its products. In the wine and liquor distribution business, for example, sales representatives typically visit their customers (which comprise bars, restaurants, etc.) and review their customers' product lists (such as menus, wine lists or the like) to determine whether the customer is still selling their product. This data gathering step allows the distributor to adjust its sales approach based on its findings. The data gathering process, however, is fraught with problems.
It can be time consuming for a data gathering sales representative to identify the product the distributor was, or is currently, selling to the customer and then to determine if the customer is still selling the distributor's product. This problem is compounded in cases whether the distributor is selling large numbers of different products to the customer and/or the customer's product list is especially large. Another data point that can be gathered is a comparison to a previous product list from the same customer. This will yield additional data about what products the customer was and is selling, which can be used to adjust a distributor's sales approach. Again, this involves a side-by-side visual comparison that can be tedious for an individual to accomplish. Lastly, the data gathering step is prone to human errors that can lead to lack of credibility or authenticity of the resulting data, thereby calling into question the usability of the gathered data.
Moreover, the collection of any relevant data regarding products managed by a distributor can aid the supply chain management process. A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, activities, information, and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to distributor, to retailer and, eventually, to the consumer. Supply chain activities are aided by the use of statistics and information regarding availability of products, the location of products, costs and fees, and the current demand for products among retailers and consumers.
Therefore, a dire need exists for improvements over the prior art, and more particularly, there is a need for an automated method and system for checking the availability of products at stores and businesses serviced by a distributor.